Spain without ETA? Basque group may be nearing end

FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2008 photo, Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the outlawed Basque Batasuna party, right, speaks at a rally beside at two unidentified masked supporters in Elgoibar northern Spain. A newspaper that often serves as a mouthpiece for the violent Basque separatist group ETA says the organization's banned political wing plans to create a new party that rejects violence. The daily Gara's report on the move by the Batasuna party on Thursday Oct. 28, 2010 comes amid growing speculation that ETA might be preparing to end 40 years of violence following a ceasefire declaration in September.Batasuna was outlawed in 2003 on grounds it is a part of ETA. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos, files)
— AP

FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2008 photo, Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the outlawed Basque Batasuna party, right, speaks at a rally beside at two unidentified masked supporters in Elgoibar northern Spain. A newspaper that often serves as a mouthpiece for the violent Basque separatist group ETA says the organization's banned political wing plans to create a new party that rejects violence. The daily Gara's report on the move by the Batasuna party on Thursday Oct. 28, 2010 comes amid growing speculation that ETA might be preparing to end 40 years of violence following a ceasefire declaration in September.Batasuna was outlawed in 2003 on grounds it is a part of ETA. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos, files)
/ AP

MADRID 
Europe's last big violent political militancy has been decimated by arrests and dwindling support. Its outlawed political wing wants to create a new party that rejects violence and turns its leaders into legitimate politicians.

This whirlwind of events in recent weeks has sparked a raging debate across Spain: Is this the beginning of the end for the Basque separatist group ETA?

The armed movement has not killed anyone in Spain in over a year and it declared a cease-fire in September. While nearly a dozen such truces have come and gone over the years, raising hopes only to see them dashed with more bloodshed and tears, this time something bigger and potentially historic might be afoot.

ETA "has never been as weak and cornered as it is now," Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez told Parliament last week. "The end of ETA is near."

Besides ridding Europe of its last major separatist group, ETA's disappearance could rescue a Socialist government that is struggling with a nearly 20 percent jobless rate and a crippling debt crisis - and trailing conservatives badly in the polls with general elections 18 months away.

Weakened by wave after wave of arrests and declining support at grass-roots level, ETA has hinted it might go further this time on the path to peace. It is expected to issue the latest in a series of statements, perhaps in just a few weeks. Whether it will go so far as to renounce violence altogether is the key question.

ETA's banned political wing Batasuna, now backed by some mainstream Basque parties and civic groups, is increasingly vocal in its new position that blowing up police cars and shooting politicians in the head at point-blank range is not the way to work toward some Basques' cherished but unlikely goal of a country of their own. ETA has killed more than 825 people since it first launched its campaign for an independent homeland in the late 1960s.

While other regions of Spain are constantly pushing the government for greater autonomy, most notably the Catalonia region where Catalan is the dominant language, Spain's Basque region has always been the nation's violent separatist hotspot.

Batasuna has now called on ETA to declare a permanent cease-fire that could be internationally verified "as an expression of will of a definitive cessation of its armed activity."

Ex-Batasuna leaders say they want to form a new party that renounces violence and regain legal status and thus a voice in the small but wealthy region of northern Spain, a proud patch that boasts its own ancient language and culture and already enjoys a broad degree of self-rule.

Txelui Moreno, a spokesman for the pro-independence movement, said Friday the Basque region is living "a historic moment." Of Batasuna's decision to reject violence, he said: "This was not just another debate. It was THE debate."

Three weeks after ETA declared its latest cease-fire, two hooded members of the group gave an interview to the pro-independence newspaper Gara in which they said ETA was prepared, under certain conditions, to accept the call for an internationally verifiable cease-fire.